Ebay's New Trick To Charge More To Sellers

In March 2019, ebay eliminated the option for "Fixed Priced" listings to have a set end date and now mandates all be "Good until Canceled." Beware, if you do not take the affirmative step to cancel the listing before it automatically renews in 30 days, you pay a new listing fee. If you are posting your listings on ebay over the course of a month, it is very easy to miss that 30 day deadline. If you list a lot of Fixed Price items, you can be automatically charged hundreds of dollars for automatic renewals for items that are seasonal or that you wanted to list only one time. I had been averaging selling about 2%-3% of my Fixed Price Listing each month. Be careful! You no longer have the option to set how long you want the listing to run at the time you first post the listing. You may owe ebay more in fees each month than the income all of you listings bring in. At least, ebay has not done the same with its "Auction" format.

You might say I am ungrateful for the 500-1,000 "free" listings ebay gave me every month. Even for the 2%-3% of the Fixed Priced listings (all in various collectible categories) I sold in a month, ebay received a final value fee of a few hundred dollars. Nothing is free, and ebay final value fees on collectibles are a high percentage.

Now, when I get more "free" listings, if I use the Fixed Price format, I am committing to automatic paid relisting fees. These "free" listings now come with a charged listing fee. I have also noticed that since the change in March, new offers for additional "free" listings come after the automatic 30 day Fixed Price relisting fee for listed items would have already been charged. ebay "ain't" stupid. Be careful you do not get caught.

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

I will agree that I don't like the removal of options for sellers to list their fixed-price wares, but this is all about ebay wanting to control the visibility (or lack thereof) of listings via their algorithms rather than allowing sellers to "force" visibility via new listings. Their stated reasoning for implementing this, e.g., long-term Google presence for the listing page results in increased sales, is bovine excrement. It may help ebay by driving more traffic, but it certainly does not help the seller as a "fresh" listing within ebay results in sales far more frequently than Google traffic does. It's typical ebay misdirection.

That said, ebay has already addressed the issue of GTC listings possibly relisting twice in the same calendar month depending on timing. As of this month, GTC listings are now based on a calendar month rather than a fixed 30-day listing period, which removes the issue entirely.

As far as " ebay final value fees on collectibles are a high percentage", you couldn't be more wrong. ebay final value fees in the stamps category is 6%, one of the lowest fee rates on the site. That pales compared to seller commissions for traditional auction houses, the APS store, and many other venues. This is one area where in my opinion ebay is NOT overcharging.

abctoo,
I know others who are not happy about this new policy with the fixed price listings.

To run off on a tangent you bring up, to me, this means your prices are too high or your shipping is too high - or both. Sale rate should be more. You seem to be running a museum and not a store.

Back to the original posting here , is there a way to identify those listings that you sold and no longer active, but show you/the seller that it is active listing.

You might want to ask that on one of the Wednesday chats.

We call these Zombie or Ghost listings and ebay totally denies it is happening.

They also tell people it is their responsibility to make sure every listing is in inventory

I have had some over the years and earned defects for cancelling due to out of stock.

I now use a 3rd party for listing and constantly compare my listings that are active on ebay with what is shown on my listing program.

Dutch - As I understand it ,customers can't see the listing but it shows up on your computer as active and your paying or is included in your totals of listing ,so your paying the monthly fee {that is the problem the original posting was talking about ,your paying each month for a listing you sold}

"Now, when I get more "free" listings, if I use the Fixed Price format, I am committing to automatic paid relisting fees."

Not if you cancel them at the end of 30 days, right? As you yourself said, "if you do not take the affirmative step to cancel the listing before it automatically renews in 30 days, you pay a new listing fee." So cancel the listings before 30 days. Why is that so difficult?

ebay sure has gone from a place to get rid of extra stuff easily to a complicated nightmare. I understand why but just interesting. I have not used ebay to sell anything in a long time. This is discouraging.

It really hasn't. I list things starting on a Thursday, finishing ten days later on a Sunday afternoon/evening UK time. 90-95% of it goes at the first time of asking. 90-95% of buyers have paid by Monday lunchtime and the lots go into the postbox. Maybe 1% lead to some sort of exchange with the buyer. The only grind is the scanning and describing. The rest is less stressful than going to the supermarket.

No, it's not difficult to end your listings before they renew, but, you know, sometimes life has a way of diverting your attention from the ebay countdown, and the next thing you know the previous month's extra free listings have renewed. (The cynic/realist in me says ebay knows it, too, and made that part of the plan.)

And another thing: the fact that I have to end my listing before the 30 days is up means I am not getting the full listing period I am paying for. No biggie if you can "snipe" the end of the listing period. But, for me, knowing about life's little diversions, I have to try to end the listings a day or two before, just to be sure I don't get caught flat-footed, which I did this month

ebay started with a business plan that included first building traffic; once the traffic and transaction volume was high enough they began transitioning to more profitable policies. This is nothing new, businesses have been doing this since capitalism began. (Is the expectation for a local brick and mortar store that they should always maintain the same prices as their original 'grand opening sale'?)

Additionally, it has been perfectly clear for at least 8 years that ebay wants to transition to new consumer type item listings. These carry a lower cost per transaction then trying to support the endless 'not as described' returns and condition complaints for used items.

So this was a 'perfect storm' for hobbyists who started with ebay and used the venue to list single stamps or other low cost items. While they took advantage of the first stages of ebay's business plan this time has now come to a close.
Don

floortrader

Somewhat different scenario, but my comparison of 3rd party listings to Ebays should still work.

It seems to me ebay's chance to compete with Amazon is just wishful thinking. I was surprised to read that people think the turning point for Amazon was the creation of Amazon Prime. Can you imagine watching ebay Prime? Maybe I could set it up to ding every time I get a new bid, what fun!

On a micro basis ebay works just fine but I think it depends on what you are selling. If you are listing the same items as 100s of other people sales won't be good, if you list unique items such as collections the bidders are there and ready to buy.

Hi Ken,
Amazon started as just an online bookstore but then evolved to an online superstore selling consumer products. ebay started as an online marketplace auctioning/selling used items and collectibles and is trying to evolve to an online superstore selling consumer products. The reasons ebay wants to be like Amazon are obvious.

Last year Amazon had trailing-12-month revenue of $208.13 billion (increase of 30.8% from 2017) while ebay's revenue totaled just $10.07 billion (increase of just 6.6%). Looked at over a 3 year period, Amazon's revenue growth was 25.97% while ebay's revenue growth was only 2.86%.

In terms of stock valuation, Amazon's 2018 Price/Sales ratio was 4.76 while ebay's was 3.33. This week saw Amazon stock price closing at $1,869.67 per share while ebay's closed at $38.91 per share. ebay's share of the U.S. e-commerce and online auctions market stands at just 1% while Amazon share of the same market is now over 40%. (And Amazon is projected to hit 50% of the U.S. e-commerce market by year's end.)

Clearly ebay has good reasons for wanting to be like Amazon, they are getting their butt handed to them in the online marketplace. ebay is at risk of being crushed by Amazon (and/or being taken over by and dismantled). Unfortunately this has little to do with what ebay sellers think and has a lot to do with what shareholders and Wall Street think.

Just as unfortunate (for us) is that there is no valid business plan for a global online auction venue that will support what our hobby really wants; selling very high volumes of low value, used items with important condition criteria. If the naysayers who often comment about the health of philately have anything to worry about it is the fact that the preferred online flea market is evolving to a retail superstore and no great alternatives will be able to take their place.

While I am sure that other companies will fill the vacuum for online auction style collectibles venues I do not think they have the traffic and eyeballs of an Amazon or the old ebay. I think that the auction style collectibles venues marketplace will become fractured into a number of much smaller competitors (i.e. Hipstamp) none of whom have the global reach or penetration that the old ebay had. Sellers will have to hope that technology can breach the gaps and allow them to sell the same material across a number of venues seamlessly. SANS or SANS style venues may be part of that solution but to succeed will need a big infusion of money and technology.

In my opinion one day many folks will lament the 'good old days' and ebay.

On the 'upside', smart philatelic organizations or existing auction companies are being handled an opportunity. It will be interesting to see if any of them have the courage to make the change and technological investment require to seize it.
Don

Don ---Nice recap of the situation .Remember the "old ebay" there was a time you could put 100 or 200 stamps on stock book pages and get 8 or 9 cents per stamp ,those were the day . Just to show everybody how things changed ,now when you go on SAN and view the lots up for auction, you are starting to see stamp lots that state "dealer's ebay inventory for sale ".